Skip to main content

The Iphone bubble

IPhone is a marketing phenomenon with around 37 million units sold worldwide.
Team Nikolovski is not one of them fallen for the phenomena.
 In matter of fact the whole phenomena is so absurd and feels more like a sect than anything else. IPhone has taken marketing and branding to a new level and has managed to create a new buyer-seller relationship. New factors seems to be driving the demand and supply, where the consumers are more than willing to wait long time for new releases as they are caught up in the world of Nextopia. Nextopia where our expectations of what are coming will be so much better then today lives. IPhone has created an exclusive feeling including gadgets and aps that will entertain it's users at all time.

As an outsider the whole thing looks so bizarre. I have never seen people so proud of a technical device before. They hold them, touch them and can hardly stop looking at them. IPhone people are so proud to be an IPhone user that they feel no shame in playing with their IPhones while having dinner or discussions. There are games to be played, aps to be used, new photo features to test and it is all very peculiar. Have people lost their common sense through a simple product? Do people have to hide behind the newest technology? Is this status? What is it that I don't understand? 

On top of all this weird behaviors that I  don't understand is an ethical dilemma regarding Iphone production. The IPhone is an expensive product which helps to create this feeling of exclusiveness. People are willing to pay for their status and material well-being. This brings more and higher revenues to the company and they are greedy. Their greediness has decided to have products produced in China where labor is cheap. The Chinese workers producing IPhones are to be blunt treated like shit. They work under poor conditions, long hours, unreasonable targets with no incentives and no vacation or time off for national holidays. Suicides have been reported and last week they tried to catch the consumer's attention by striking. But they don't see them and they don't hear them!!

It seems to be no news value in that they are suffering and need the western world to react. I looked through the big Swedish Newspaper last week for articles about the Chinese IPhone factory striking, but all I could find was a small notice in one out of four papers. I am naïve and I thought Sweden stood behind and believed in fair treatment and human rights. Pretending and choosing when to care and care when it will gain us is my conclusion.  Sweden has a very high population of proud IPhone users and of course it is better to keep the dirt in in the dark. Protect the greedy companies and let the swedes be proud of their IPhones, that is also human rights isn’t it !? But even if they do know they might be too proud of their IPhones and the happiness it brings them that they might look the other way. Would YOU look the other way? Do you look the other way?
 
Isn't it disgusting how companies can sell products to the highest prices when the production is under all criticism made in countries under dictatorship without any regulations for the workers? Doesn't that make consumers stupid for buying from their products? Or we simply don't care?




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Weekly Update 24/52 Making leaving gifts and wine ladies

During week 24 I have been working on preparing thank you gifts for kids teachers and friends. I like to give something symbolic which also can be useful. This year I decided to buy water bottles for the teachers and to make them personalized writing their name and some flowers on them. I bought plain smaller bottles at IKEA. With my Cricut i designed and cut it out of permanent vinyl. With adding vinyl on the bottles, they can only be hand-washed otherwise the vinyl will come off.  After five years in Germany I have gotten so use to saying Frau Janssen rather then using her first name. So I decided that I will use the last name because that is the only name the kids use. Funny how you get use to something that I from the beginning thought was so stupid and old fashion.  When I was playing around with my Cricut I also figured out how to transfer my wine ladies into svg file which is needed so the machine can cut out my illustrations. I did a test with iron on transfer vinyl. I made the

Weekly update 23/52 Düsseldorf Art journals, Tonhalle and pool season

End of May beginning of June this wonderful time of the year and it is starting to be more and more emotional and real that we soon will be packing up and leaving. After this very cold spring it is nice to finally warm up and that the pool season has started. Here in Wittlaer Düsseldorf we have a local pool in Kaiserwerth Freibad Flossenweg where we go to swim. On a normal school day in the afternoon it is not too bad with people but on a hot hot weekend it is very crowded. It is kind of funny living in a place where you meet parents from school and neighbors first fully dressed and then undressed in the pool.  One amazing experience was seeing Düsseldorf Tonhalle from inside where Mila and her school together with four other schools in Düsseldorf had a Sing Pause concert. It was magical to hear them all sing in this old planetarium which has been changed into a concert hall.  My Creative work has been focusing on personalizing Art journals. I bought plain brown paper art journals to t

Weekly update 40/52 Autumn colors and cinnamon buns

Welcome October the most colorful month of the year. Yes we are going full steam towards the darker and colder part of the year, but I have to admit it is cosy and pretty with all the colorful leaves.  I don't know if it is a new thing to have theme days where a dish or something is being celebrated. I am guessing it is a capitalistic marketing great idea so companies can make more money like Valentine day. One of those days in Sweden is 4 of October when our national bakery Cinnamon bun is being honored. I got inspired! Some time ago I bought nice linnen tea-towels which I was planning to make some print/design on and when I got inspired by cinnamon bun I knew exactly what to make. I started scribbling and drawing buns on a big sheet. When I had one or two which I thought looked ok I transfered my bun drawing to my Cricut and had it cut out on iron-on vinyl. My mum is a master in baking buns and so I made a tea-towel/baking-towel in honor of not only cinnamon buns but of my mother